It’s us, not you! How PR agencies calculate retainers.

“The CFO will determine the baseline hours, and the available client hours, for each staff person… [and] can create budgets that will be the basis of your fee quotes.”

You know when you talk with a traditional PR agency and one of the first questions they ask is, “what’s your budget?”. This question often comes long before important questions about desired outcomes, commercial objectives, the target audience and what you’ve already tried. It should be no surprise then that, when the proposal arrives, it matches the budget you told them you have.

Have you ever wondered how they come up with the number that most PR agencies use for their average monthly retainer? This article from PRNews explains how it’s more about their needs than it is about yours. It explains that agencies should use the CFO to use their budget as the basis for setting their retainer fees, rather than one based on value and creating a plan that helps your business achieve its commercial goals.

This is one of the reasons that I started THINK | DIFFERENT [LY]. Your business deserves a PR plan that will help you deliver the outcomes it needs, rather than one that is built based on the number of billable hours the agency needs to meet its payroll. It’s why we publish our hourly rates, give our customers control over what they spend – down to a single hour – and develop custom plans for each startup and small business we work with.

If your current agency doesn’t pro-actively look for opportunities to reduce your PR costs then we need to talk. You need to THINK | DIFFERENT [LY]